Darran Wrighton reports that “In April 2014 four players from three regions of the Pacific Andy Duhaze and Lea Bolo (New Caledonia – West Pacific), Gillian Osmont (Tahiti – East Pacific) and Carol Lee (Saipan – North Pacific) plus Darran Wrighton ( Tour coach and ITF Development Officer Pacific Oceania) were invited to join a tour that would combine tournament play, training opportunities with an Australian Performance Academy. They had the opportunity to watch Fed Cup Players Sam Stosur and Casey Dellaqua train and compete in a high level Inter Academy Challenge made up of the top sixteen Academy Teams in Queensland . This is not to forget all the intrinsic benefits of learning how to start to gain some independence and learn about travelling on tour by doing their own washing, supermarket shopping to a budget, making sure they retain receipts and learning how to work out public transport timetables.
It was to be a very hurried start to the tour as the team had not counted on racket bags not being part of the luggage on the internal flight to our first Tournament in a town called Mackay which is in rural Queensland and about and hour and a half flight from Brisbane. After the tour coach making the necessary financial adjustment and literally running to the departure gate the team got to Mackay just as the tournament was starting. For the players it was literally off the plane onto the court.
The tour players found their stride early on the first day and although this was a sliver level competition the opposition was not as strong as what the players were due to face in the Inter Academy Challenge. This tournament was a great warm up event, especially for establishing some communication skills and learning some doubles positioning that would help later on.
All of our players featured strongly with the girls (Carol and Lea) winning the 14’s doubles and playing against each other in the singles final. The Boys won the 12’s Doubles and Andy Duhaze won the 12 Singles and Gillian Osmont coming third. As well as adding some points to their Australian Ranking the players all came away from some great trophies and were introduced to the great hospitality shown by rural events like these that are really supported by the local community.
After returning to Brisbane and having a well earned day off exploring the city it was back to business with us having a training block at the Queensland State Tennis Centre and also court time donated by our new friends at Lifetime Tennis Ambiwerra. The day of the Big Event came round and there was a real atmosphere of expectation on the Pat Rafter Arena as over 60 players and 20 coaches gathered to learn about the format and rules of this unique event. Within the event each team played 2 Doubles ties, then 2 Boys singles and then 2 Girls singles. It was a timed event with each round being thirty minutes so every game was of vital importance, winning games was great for the team but equally not losing games became very tactical from round to round. Something that many people may not know is that three of the Pacific players’ first language is French, the tour coach has from his younger years some knowledge of French and this was to come into use on many occasions where it was better to keep things simple on the change of ends “beaucoup de croise” was a well used term especially in the doubles, basically meaning keep it cross court and away from the net player.
Not only did the players do a superb job of supporting each other (in English and French” but when new found Australian friends were yelling out “Allez Pacifique” it was fantastic to see that the Australian teams we were playing against not only showing appreciation of the Pacific team spirit and fairness of play but they were soon to find out that our players were very competent. We managed to win through all of our round robin matches against seasoned junior players many whom were used to playing under pressure. Our last match in the pool was to be against the eventual Winners of the event. We managed to tie with them on the amount of rubbers won during the match but they took the top of the pool as they had won more games than us.
In the Semi Final we were drawn against the winners of the other Pool – TFP Academy from the Sunshine Coast who’s coach had earlier in the year won the prestigious Tennis Australia Performance Coach of the year award.
This draw was to work in Team Pasifika’s favour as Darran had worked with the opposition players as he had previously worked at TFP when he used to be based in Australia. Team TFP took the choice to field two mixed doubles teams in the first rubber rather than have the girls and boys play separately. This tactic worked to an extent but after the first round both teams had won a match. In the second round our Number 1 faced off against last years Australian 12 and under National Champion Dane Sweeny. He held his own but couldn’t stop Dane putting some games on the score board, on court number two Gillian Osmont was trying to stem the flow of games going against Andy by keep the TFP number 2 player in arms reach. This is where this event was tough, whatever was lost on one court needed to be won on the other. After the 2nd round the TFP boys had done some major game difference damage so it was down to the Team Pasifika girls to try and reel back the games as much as possible. Team Pasifika changed their tactics and put Lea into number 1 spot as we would need someone who is a steady player to compete against the TFP no 1 Kristina. Carol Lee our power player from Saipan would be a perfect match for TFP player no 2 Darcy . Using Darran’s prior knowledge of the TFP players worked well as he banked on Darcy’s inconsistency when she loses momentum to go in favour of Carol as he knew if Carol could go out and dominate the games early that the opposition would struggle.
Carol Lee and Lea Bolo performed their roles beautifully and the tour coach was in constant motion keeping moving between the two courts after the change of ends, the clock was ticking and team Pasifika were gaining back the eighteen games difference from the boys round, game after game went by in Team Pasifika’s favour and amongst all the excitement no one was working out exactly the score differential. The buzzer went and time stopped for a second for all involved whilst we did the calculations… 3 rubbers each and TFP came out on top by one game!!!
This was bittersweet for our team as the team had done an incredible job of travelling to a new environment and giving it their all. They had raised the eye brows of many high level Performance coaches and the Tennis Australia National Coaching staff putting Pacific Oceania firmly on the map as a region that can and will continue to produce high level junior tennis players able to compete on the international stage against some of the best 12 and under players in Australia.
The awards ceremony was to produce two more suprises for the team. Lea was nominated for the “fair play” award and Tour Coach Darran received the “Coaching Excellence” award that was voted on by the other team coaches. This was an honour for Darran considering the number of credentialed coaches at this event in his previous country of residence.”
